


Their Final Puzzle... Until the Next One

by The Author (Yours_The_Author)



Category: Layton Kyouju Series | Professor Layton Series
Genre: Azran Legacy Spoilers, Bad Puns, Canonical Character Death, Emmy and Bronev are Unconscious the Whole Time, F/M, Fatherly Layton, Fluff and Angst, Math, Math Puzzles, Puzzles, Unwound Future Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:07:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25057450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yours_The_Author/pseuds/The%20Author
Summary: "Everything snapped into place. Color, light, warmth, emotions just appeared. If he was disoriented before the reappearance of his sight, he was even more so now.""Could he truly dare to hope, against all logic and reasoning, that the voice he heard was the voice he had wanted to hear for so long?"
Relationships: Claire/Hershel Layton
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	Their Final Puzzle... Until the Next One

**Author's Note:**

> So… first a one-shot about Hershel and Randall, and now a one-shot about Hershel and Claire. ~Let me drive a stake into your hea-art~ You poor readers. Not that I’m any better off; I nearly cried several times when writing this. Art is pain, but it’s a good pain.  
> -  
> Spoilers ahoy for Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy and Professor Layton and the Unwound Future. Like, major spoilers. DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU’VE SEEN PLAYTHROUGHS OF/PLAYED THE GAMES YOURSELF. These are things you do not want to know beforehand if you want all of the emotional impact. All of it.

The pain seemed to last an eternity, covering every inch of his skin and getting between every cell and blood vessel in his body. Even his hair, which did not have nerves, and his clothes, which were not attached to his body by anything but gravity, felt like they were on fire. His life flashed before his eyes; mostly tragic events like losing… her…

Almost as soon as she crossed his broiling mind, the pain disappeared. _Ah,_ he thought. _That was… unpleasant._

Wherever he was now, he couldn’t see a thing. His eyes weren’t closed, and it wasn’t pitch black, but he couldn’t see. No, that wasn’t it. He couldn’t comprehend, couldn’t perceive. He couldn’t put into words what he was seeing. At best, he would be able to describe it as “a vague gray-blue blob of light.” He was out of focus, so deeply out of focus that he vaguely wondered if he’d ever escape the feeling.

“Hershel.”

Everything snapped into place. Color, light, warmth, emotions just _appeared_. If he was disoriented before the reappearance of his sight, he was even more so now.

He was sitting at a small table with a white cloth touching the floor, in a large dining area filled with warm browns and rich reds. The light of the room was bright but soft, and added a bit of a yellow tinge to everything. The room was comfortable in temperature; neither too warm or too cold. Passing waiters and waitresses created a light breeze that always felt perfect, and clinking glasses, utensils, and quiet murmur of other patrons made the room comfortable, yet not overwhelming.

The only thing truly making him uncomfortable were the emotions he felt: confusion on what was going on; adrenaline from the memory of pain; sadness from the loss of his friends and estranged brother, and even _him,_ in a warped sense. There was one emotion—no, more of a feeling—that weighed heavily on his mind and heart: morbid hope. Could he truly dare to hope, against all logic and reasoning, that the voice he heard was the voice he had wanted to hear for so long?

He looked across the table he was sitting at. As if she had been waiting for him to take in their surroundings, her presence was as clear as the sky above the clouds.

“Hello, Hershel,” Claire smiled at him.

“…Claire…!” He set his hands on the table—to push himself up and out of the seat, to propel himself around the table and—

She gently placed her hands on top of his, stopping him from making a scene. He grabbed her hands in his and held on like he would never let go. He wouldn’t, if he could help it.

“Goodness, you’re full of energy today,” Claire said. Her voice was just as he remembered it; soft and gentle, with a certain pitch—no doubt due to her near-constant smile—that suggested she could let out a quiet, contented laugh at any moment. “Your heartbeat is so quick, too; why don’t you drink some tea and calm down?”

A waiter appeared at their table and set down two cups of tea and two small glasses of iced water. Hershel nodded politely at him out of habit and turned to look at Claire again. He vaguely noticed that he wasn’t wearing his brown coat, but rather a white dress shirt and a red vest. The constant shadow of his hat rim was gone as well, but there was most certainly still a hat on his head. That old red cap, perhaps?

Claire cocked her head to the side and gave Hershel a smile with just a hint of playfulness to it. “I’m not going anywhere, Hershel. You can have some tea.” Slowly, he pulled a hand away, took a quick sip from the cup (his favorite blend, with the perfect amount of sweetness and bitterness), and took hold of her again.

He knew this was rather silly, and yet he couldn’t find it in himself to care at the moment. He was here. _She_ was here. They were together.

She adjusted herself so that she could rub her thumbs along the back of his hands. “Is this too much?” She asked softly.

Hershel didn’t say anything. In truth, it was a lot to take in; he could barely find it in himself to speak a word to her. What would he say? There so many things he should have said back then, but now that the opportunity presented itself, he had absolutely no idea where to start.

He blinked as she put his hands together and massaged a circle with her thumb on his open palm. “Breathe,” she instructed gently. He did so, matching her slightly exaggerated inhales and exhales. It was a familiar pattern that they had done together in the past. Hershel would be overwhelmed, Claire would hold his hands and draw a circle, and they’d breathe together. It always worked. Now was no exception.

“…Finding the right words to say,” he began once he had calmed down, “can be the most difficult puzzle of all.”

“And yet, you’ve managed to find the answer. That’s exactly what I thought you’d say.” Claire smiled brightly at him. “I’m afraid I’m still trying to answer it myself.”

Hershel gently pressed her hands between his. “You’ve solved it just by being here.”

“Oh, Hershel,” Claire breathed a laugh. “That was a bit cheesy.”

“Well,” he gave her a smile of his own, “I will try to do, a-hem, _cheddar_ , next time.”

She blinked in surprise. Her sudden, genuine laughter made his heart soar. “I can’t _brie-lieve_ you’d do this!”

“I hope you won’t think me as, ah, being _Munster-ous,”_ he replied.

She was shaking with laughter, and Hershel felt happier than he had in years. “I think it’s safe to say we both feel _gouda_ ,” she chuckled, “but there’s something I’d like to ask of you.”

“Of course,” Hershel relaxed his shoulders and sat up straighter. “A true gentleman never turns down the request of a beautiful lady. What do you need?”

“It’s nothing much…” It was very important to her. “I have a puzzle I’d like you to solve.”

Hershel’s smile grew. “A puzzle from a beautiful lady? It would be my pleasure.”

She tapped his hand in mock embarrassment. “Oh, you flatterer. Now, I’ll need to draw the puzzle, so could I…?” She lifted their clasped hands a bit.

“Oh, yes, indeed,” Hershel slowly released her hands and folded his in front of him on the table. _Just in case,_ a part of his mind whispered, but he pushed it down. Claire had taken a pen and a piece of paper from seemingly nowhere and was almost finished writing something down. She lifted the paper to inspect it, nodded after a second, and handed the paper and pen to Hershel. He examined the puzzle he’d been presented with. He looked back up at her. “A maths equation?”

“The puzzle is in two parts,” she explained. “First, you reduce the equation to its simplest form. Then, you interpret that into a sentence. Does that make sense?”

“I believe so.” He looked more closely at the equation:

9x-7i > 3(3x-7u)

After recalling the basic rules of maths, he began to reduce:

9x-7i > 9x-21u

-7i > -21u

i < 3u

“There we go,” Hershel presented his answer.

Claire clapped quietly, smiling. “Well done!”

He reached up to adjust his hat brim and missed, having forgotten for a moment that he wasn’t wearing it. Instead, he fastened his cap. “Critical thinking is the key to success,” he replied.

Claire gave him another playful smile. “Well… _perhaps._ ”

He gave her a curious look. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Because you see,” Claire pointed a finger and began to move it around in the air, as if she were drawing on a board. “Critical thinking involves objective analysis, which is analysis free of subjective human experience or interpretation. Often times, it _is_ the key to success. But having a variety of thinking styles can grant you more keys to success, some easier to use for certain situations than others. That plays into the second half of this puzzle.” She took back the pen and paper, circled the reduced equation, and handed the paper back. “Tell me what this means.”

Hershel looked between her and the paper. “It… says… ‘I’ is less than three times ‘U’.”

“That’s what it _says_ ,” Claire encouraged, “but what does it _mean?_ Perhaps you should try looking at it from different angles?”

Getting the hint, Hershel turned the paper around slowly, stopping when…

“At this angle, the <3 looks like a heart,” he stated.

“Not an anatomically correct heart, but yes. What does that make you think?”

He thought for a moment. “…If only the <3 is at this angle, and the ‘i’ and the ‘u’ are viewed as normal, then it would appear to read as ‘’i’ heart ‘u’’. The ‘i’ represents the pronoun ‘I’, and the ‘u’ represents the pronoun ‘you’. Thus, ‘I heart you’. However, that can’t be the final answer. You cannot ‘heart’ a person; it’s not a verb. Therefore, we must think symbolically. A heart represents life, vitality, and lo—my word.” Her grin was confirmation he had found the answer. “I love you,” Hershel said to Claire.

She clapped her hands quickly and quietly. “I love you too, Hershel. If nothing else, remember that.”

Hershel furrowed his brow, smile fading. “I will not be going anywhere, Claire. I’ve died, saving the world from the Azran Legacy.”

“Yes,” she said sadly. “But it’s not your time. You have to go back. It’s out of our hands.”

“W…what?” The yellow light of the dining area intensified, turning almost golden. Hershel was filled with a panic. “Claire!” He stood from the table and hurried to her side, wrapping his arms around her. She did the same. “I don’t want to say goodbye! I can’t! I won’t!”

“So much to say, so little time…” Claire mused. “This won’t be the last time we meet, Hershel. You won’t remember this meeting, but please never forget how much I love you.”

“I-I don’t understand.” His voice cracked, but he didn’t care.

“I don’t entirely understand it myself, but you have so much to do in the world, Hershel. Puzzles to solve, friends to make, adventures to have. I won’t lie to you; it won’t be easy, not at all. But I know that when we meet again at the right time, we’ll have so much to talk about and share. And there won’t be any interruptions.” She cupped his face and gently guided his lips to hers. They lingered there together, the light growing brighter and brighter until it didn’t seem to matter if his eyes were closed or not. “Until the next one, Hershel.”

…

His ears were ringing, and the floor felt simultaneously too hot and too cold. He could feel grime on his face, and his clothes were sticky with sweat. There was a sound of wind, whistling from farther off.

He opened his eyes slowly. He was lying on a brick floor, head turned to the side. It took him a moment to clear away the fog in his eyes, but he began to recall where he was and what happened. His body was still buzzing, as if he had been electrified. He might as well have been, he thought to himself. He was filled with memories of the Azran Dolls firing on an unprepared world, the weight of the answer to preventing destruction, determined expressions he could only hope he mirrored, dying.

Dying… the thought that his life had ended filled him with a coldness that hit him like punch to his stomach, nearly causing him to curl in on himself in an attempt to hide from it. He remembered the burning pain beforehand and the golden light just before waking up, but there was no memory of what happened in between. This realization that he couldn’t remember what happened—if he had seen _her_ —is what truly hurt him.

Hershel squinted in the direction his head had been turned. A thin man in a gray suit was lying several meters away, though he couldn’t tell if he was staring back, since his eyes were hidden by a pale mask—ah.

Descole had somehow fallen in a way that ended with him facing Hershel. They stared at each other. Normally, a gentleman wouldn’t stare, but in this private moment, Hershel let himself get away with it.

He would have thought the man with the mask unconscious, had it not been for the firmly set line his mouth was pressed in. It was almost the same as Hershel’s; forced into a neutral expression in an attempt to hide the overwhelmed emotions within. Hershel recalled Descole’s passing mention of a wife and daughter—a sister-in-law and a niece he had never gotten to meet—and wondered for a moment if Descole was wondering something similar to him. He felt a pair of eyes on his face, and Descole’s mouth twitched, hiding a trembling lip. He was.

The sound of a young boy groaning exhaustedly drew Hershel’s thoughts to the present moment. He stood up, swaying and stumbling quite a bit as he hobbled to Luke’s side. Luke Triton, his apprentice number one. Luke would probably never hear the professor call him that in front of him, but Hershel had to admit that it was quite catchy.

Luke was trying to force his eyes open, and the professor knelt carefully and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. This seemed to speed up the process. “Professor?” Luke asked tiredly, opening his eyes and looking up at him.

“Yes,” he confirmed. Luke struggled to sit up, and the professor helped him into a sitting position. The boy almost immediately fell forward into him, and he let Luke lean on him for a few seconds before patting his shoulder and holding him upright. He did a once over. The state of his clothes made it seem as if the boy had taken a tumble in a garden patch, but there appeared to be no abrasions or bruises. No new injuries, at least.

Luke blinked sleepily a few times before meeting the professor’s eyes. “Did… we do it?”

A few more groans echoed around them. The others were getting up. “I believe we did,” he replied. The professor stood and helped Luke to his feet. Their adventure wasn’t over yet.

**Author's Note:**

> Any of the Layton Characters: *Does something soft*  
> Me: *Screams and turns into a puzzle* That’s nice.  
> -  
> Man, Layton just cannot catch a break, can he? He’s doing his best, but then the world is like, “oh, by the way, here’s another horrible tragedy, just for the fun of it. Haha, loser.” And he just keeps on going, because that’s what gentlemen do. What a guy.  
> -  
> In this story at least, I imagine that Layton can get overwhelmed sometimes, and Claire was able to help him the best. Since she’s not around anymore, he has to comfort himself. It’s not as effective, but it works. He certainly can’t tell anyone else about his inner emotional turmoil; true gentlemen tough it out, in his mind.  
> -  
> Claire likes puns. Layton likes making Claire laugh. Sometimes Layton will slip a pun into his inner thoughts when he’s content or wants to remember better times. Very rarely will he say a pun out loud. He feels conflicted when this happens. Everyone else thinks he’s being purposefully quirky.  
> -  
> Layton likes catchy names or phrases. “Please bring it”? How do you do, fellow kids? “Professor Layton’s apprentice number one”? Good job, Luke, you brilliant boy.  
> -  
> Descole, oh Descole, you absolute bread man. A sad bread man, but a bread man nonetheless. Wherever you are after the games, please actually say hi to your brother every so often. Like, I don’t know, by leaving an egg outside his house with your mask drawn on it in a marker.  
> -  
> *Me seeing Layton making sure Luke doesn’t have a bruise* Paternal Layton! Paternal Layton! “Oh, goodness, no, I could never be a father.” “Professor, I made a puzzle; would you like to try solving it?” “Of course, Luke, my boy. You always make the most fascinating puzzles. You will be the best gentleman when I am gone. I’m proud of you.”  
> -  
> My sister woke me up at six this morning. Apparently, there’s going to be an HD remake of The Unwound Future coming sometime soon? I just think that’s really neat. She showed me the new cover art; the boys are so soft. It’s insane, yet perfectly legal and welcome. I probably won’t be able to afford it, but maybe this means Layton can be in Smash.  
> -  
> Yeah, that’s all the notes I’ve got. Leave a review and tell me what you thought. See you all later. Until then!


End file.
